Big falls were recorded for storage products - down 37.1 per cent - and the aforementioned netbooks. Most other IT product categories were up or down a bit on last year's numbers.

"With [tablets] included, IT as a whole grew 14 per cent in value April 2012 on April 2011," said GfK analyst Christopher Kennedy-Sloane. "However, when we exclude this new category, the whole of IT fell one per cent over that same period." ®